Facebook announces link-up with Spotify

Song sharing comes to the social network

Facebook has finally announced that it is teaming up with Spotify to offer song sharing straight from the pages of the social network.

The link-up with Spotify is part of many partnerships announced with content providers, offering up social apps for lovers of music, movie and news.

One of the biggest and most wanted tie-up is Spotify, which finally comes to Facebook through the new Timeline feature.

The collaboration is a significant one for both companies, as it propels Spotify into the mainstream globally and pitches Facebook as an entertainment hub, as well as a social network – something that MySpace rebranded itself as recently.

The link-up was unveiled at Facebook's f8 conference, which TechRadar watched with representatives from Facebook UK.

To greet the UK press, Joanna Shields, VP Europe, Facebook, said: "This is the biggest announcement for the Facebook platform since 2007.

"At Facebook, we like to say this journey is one per cent finished and tonight will be testament to that."

Not only did CEO Mark Zuckerberg – now the 14th richest person on the Forbes rich list – take to the stage to announce changes to Facebook, but so did Spotify founder Daniel Ek, who said about the news:

"Finding new music is always difficult and that is why we created Spotify. We knew the service had to be free and social.

"We have spent the last few years building a service where you can find music. Add this to Facebook's 800 million users and this will light up the world."

The first hint that a link-up between Facebook and Spotify was happening came in August 2010, when a revamp of the service offered deep Facebook integration.

Since then there has been rumours that Facebook was looking to get into the music market – in June, information came out with regards to how its music dashboard would work.

In July the rumour was it that its music service would be called Facebook Vibes, while back in May there were reports that Spotify and Facebook had signed a deal and that collaboration was incoming, but this didn't come to fruition.

But it's not just Spotify who will be working with Facebook. Services like MixCloud, Deezer and SoundCloud have also come aboard on the music side.

Facebook also announced that you will be able to watch TV shows and movies within Facebook - through Netflix, DailyMotion and others - and newspapers such as the Guardian and the Independent have also taken the social step, allowing their content to be shared and viewed within Facebook.